Summary:

The robins outside his office window are building a nest. Twig by twig, stick by stick, branch by branch. The papers on top of his office desk are forming a victory. Word by word, paragraph by paragraph, stack by stack. They're both getting somewhere, eventually. [one-shot] [drabble]

Disclaimer:

I don't own KHR!.

The future is always more beautiful.

Tsuna is twenty-eight now, scarred for life right over his heart, and miraculously alive in spite of that.

'Oh, how science has progressed,' he thinks, reminiscing on stuttering redheads and nervous stomachs which become as steady as the sun's daily trips across the sky when it came to performing open-heart surgery in a grimy guerilla battlefield with nothing with a knife fragment and tree splinters and his own hair and body.

It's a fond thought.

Paperwork being a well-known plague upon any member of upper management, former Vongola Dons had renovated the Head Office so that it was airy and bright and reinforced with the strongest materials the not inconsiderable Vongola coffers could supply.

A large window of bulletproof glass is straight across from him, with a lovely view of some trees in the Vongola courtyard and more meadowland behind, the reasoning being that if one is going to spend a lot of time sitting in that one place, they may as well have something nice to look at while efficiently whiling away the uneventful hours.

These hours these days are more uneventful than those hours those days, as the 10th Generation Guardians had vowed to reform the Mafia.

As Sky Guardian, because even the sky is only a minor role in the vast cosmic theater, Tsuna intends to make good on his promise.

He likes to believe he's wiser with age, and maybe he is, or maybe he isn't, but either way, he also believes that the Mafia truly isn't irredeemable.

Mukuro still calls it naivety, and he still makes suggestive remarks about possessing his body, which have only increased ever since Tsuna made the mistake of flirting back in an attempt to make him stop.

It's a fond call.

The trees are shiny and slick with smooth dark leaves, cookie-cutter from a distance and ever-so-unique in careful observation.

Further careful observation takes in the sight of two robins fluttering busily and intently around a patch of branch.

They are half-blocked by some more leaves, yet it is clear they have a very-much-sane method in their very-much-methodic madness.

One of them leaves, exiting out of view, and as Tsuna watches on with a mild sense of curiosity, it returns with a bundle of twigs in it's beak, their thin ends brushing against it's proud bloody chest.

A little feathered woodcutter returning with a little haul of kindling.

Ah, a nest in the making, then.

'Is it nesting season already?'

He wonders vaguely if Hibird will ever get a mate of his own, and realizes with a tender sort of sadness that the cheerful fluffy mascot is getting older, his buttery feathers draining to dishwater sludge.

But his voice persists valiantly and clear, even in his twilight years and slowly eroding memory, even as he bumps clumsily into light fixtures and often looks dazed before dropping off a perch without cause, even then, his beak still forms each syllable of the Namimori Middle School anthem with a reverent carefulness.

Kyoya's facial expression, stolid at the worst of times, spasms briefly in a twitch of heart-ripping agony with each sign of physical and mental deterioration that his beloved pet, his partner, displays.

Outside his window, ignorant of watching eyes, the perched robin magnanimously accepts the twigs and hops back to place them to it's liking, stopping halfway to look back to it's mate and clack it's beak in what looks like a comical parody of a reprimand.

The twig-bringer ducks it's head and clacks it's beak back, then spreads wings and dives off the branch, out of sight once more, assumedly catching an updrift and steadying out.

'Cute, isn't it. It's a hard task, with their poor choices of material and their poorly equipped bodies, but they try and they try and they keep on trying, twig by twig. Is it out of some love, some desire for offpsring, some desire for a safe place for their beloveds? Do they even know what love is?'

No, they don't, it dawns upon him.

They do this task because it is what feels natural.

And that's the thing, isn't it?

'It feels natural to want to make a safe place for those you love. How large of a safe place, well...'

Tsuna drops his gaze down to the sheafs of paperwork on his desk, his hands having paused midway through crafting a diplomatic treaty with the latest subdued trouble-making Famiglia.

In his completed stack of work, tucked intermittently here and there, are reports on damage payments, personal letters from his friends, printed-out missives about Lambo and I-Pin's latest escapades at university.

'... well, I've always aimed for the sky. Twig by twig, is it?'

Tsuna glances over to the robins one last time, glancing past the robins and onto the serene, verdant rolls of undulating grassland, dotted by wildflowers and larger dabs of color that he knows are towns under Vongola control.

Under Vongola guarantees of protection and safety and no-one-will-harm-my-your-our-loved-ones.

Today is a good day, indeed.

Tomorrow will be a better one, for sure.

And next week?

Well, who can say?

But the future is always more beautiful.

'We're working at it,' Tsuna repeats to himself, propping up the side of his face with the flat of his right palm.

'We'll keep on working, because someday we're bound to get somewhere. That's how things work.'

Then he looks down at the signature under his arm, which is now smudged, and sighs.

It's a fond sigh.

He replaces the sheet of paper, tops off his inkwell pen, and neatly continues building his own dream of a nest and visions for the familial future.

They're getting somewhere.

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Fluff, because I really need to work on clearing out the drabbles in the story ideas listed on my profile.

The saddest part I feel I wrote was the Hibird description.

And yes, I know. I can't write a proper drabble (under 1000 words) without feeling like I need to flesh it out.

Eh. I'm working on that, too.

I'm also getting somewhere. :]

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-Review, please.-